this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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And this is how you gut the Fediverse.... Don't even give people the option to run their own single-user instance to avoid the drama. Defederate them, too. Splinter everything into oblivion.
EDIT: Seriously. As someone who isn't a hardcore militant FOSS federation activist, this is the kind of stuff that makes me want to throw up my hands and say, "Screw it. I guess I'll go sign up at Threads."
I would agree with you if threads didn't choose to avoid market with decent consumer protection laws, EU.
They aren't launching at EU for a reason, and that's good enough for me to take a stance against them.
Just because they haven’t launched in the EU yet doesn’t mean they won’t. They were clearly rushing to get this out the door. I’d be absolutely shocked if they don’t go to the EU since Facebook and Instagram are there already.
Facebook is in a lot of shit with EU right now because of GDPR non compliance. They are at a risk of just getting flat out booted from here if they don't fix their shit.
That combined with the upcoming Digital Markets Act means they might not get a chance to launch here at all
Won’t they have to comply with at least some EU laws in order to become federated? If EU residents can interact with Threads via another instance, they’ll still be on the hook for all of that mirrored data.
It could also be that the instances federating with Threads are on the hook, because they're giving data on EU residents to a third party
Then go ahead to threads tbh, too many times now has some amazing things on the internet been absolutely fucking ruined by a company or by it becoming a business.
Enough with companies being involved with everything.
I guess everyone else replying to you doesn’t get what you are saying.
They aren’t threatening to leave like it matters. They are expressing concern that preemptively defederating with anyone that hasn’t blocked Meta/Facebook/Threads/Insert_Bad_Actor_Here is a horrible idea.
No one is saying that we shouldn’t defederate with Meta. We are saying not to make the mistake of fracturing a community that, in internet terms, is in its infancy.
I’m willing to bet most people here don’t like being told that they can’t do something for arbitrary reasons. So why would you care what another instance is doing? If you don’t like your instance, move. If you don’t like another instance personally, block them.
Defederation is a powerful tool when necessary. It can block toxic communities, stop raids, and remove spam centers. But defederating by association is a drastic step.
Edit: And the comment of
You know how you kill Lemmy, fracture it and make it so difficult to find/understand that the general populace, not early adopters, not techies, normal people give up.
And where will they go? Maybe a place run by a company that they already use. With a shiny new app… AND 30 MILLION PEOPLE that already have it.
Congratulations, in your attempt to kill Meta you have just alienated the vast majority of potential users and sent them straight to that which you were trying to destroy.
"Insert_Bad_Actor" is so widely vague that it can apply anywhere to anyone (slippery slope, I know, but this entire discussion hinges on some application of the principle).
Two months ago the rallying cry for federation/fediverse was "YOU CAN CONTROL IT" which very quickly has morphed into "YOU CAN CONTROL IT AS LONG AS YOU FIT IN THIS PARTICULAR BOX." A lot of this feels like it's coming from a place of fear, which is not a great place to make informed and logical decisions from.
A lot of the discussion I've seen here and on Mastodon around Meta/Threads/federating with a corporate entity seems to be circling around three issues.
Privacy. There is an assumption that as soon as Meta gets it's fingers into the metaverse pie they'll hoover up everything they can. My question to anyone that thinks this is, "How do you know they don't do it already?" Meta can very easily have a server setup somewhere to pull in ActivityPub information. IT'S THE ENTIRE POINT OF FEDERATION. You can't stop them, other than to block the instance. So unless someone figures out that Meta is running a particular instance and then announces it so that admins can block it, it's reasonable to assume it's already happening. This just means what you post already isn't private, and never should be assumed to be.
Ads. Somehow people think that Meta will abuse federation to sells ads to send out as posts. Which, if they do that, they will be quickly blocked and they've just ruined their new crop of eyeballs. On top of that, sending ads out into the void to end up next to god knows what content, on god knows what server, in front of god knows who, is not something that most ad buyers are going to spend money on. Any ad buyers want to know that they are getting value for their spend.
EEE, or Embrace Extend Extinguish. This is to me the most valid argument for keeping them at arm's length. The basic premise is that these huge corps can spend the money up front to build on top of an open standard, add improvements that will be limited to only their version, then once they have the market share/cornered pull the rug out by either defederating and hurting the whole thing, or by locking users in to their "better" service. This has happened a number of times in the past, and Facebook has been guilty of it themselves.
Whatever happens with this in the future will be interesting to watch unfold, that's for sure. But doing anything before the service even has the hooks to connect in and federate seem so premature to me.
You hit the nail on the head.
I purposefully went vague because this won’t be the last. There will always be decisions that need to be made. There will always be a new company looking for a payday.
And if we are going to say, don’t just ‘Defederate from Meta’, but also ‘Defederate with anyone who hasn’t defederated from Meta too!’ then we have one very steep and slippery slope indeed.
100% agreed on just about everything. I don't think EEE is even a good argument (I'd love to entertain strong arguments otherwise!) - kerberos seems like the best related example, but that's not even very applicable, and I don't think XMPP even was subject to EEE (here's a longer response on that: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/708874 )
Nobody is stopping you
Lots of upvotes here but also lots of unhappy replies... I agree with you and want to expand on some things I've come across (I've written much of this in chats with other people):
It's not easy to "embrace extend extinguish" an open protocol (look at the Internet/ipv4/whatever example) - kerberos is the most compelling example imo, but that still barely applies imo. I have a response to the XMPP example here: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/708874
Who chooses social media based on principles? Not very many people, plus even fewer people understand the technology enough to understand those principles (did you know tons of info is already public on activitypub networks?)
I guarantee 99% of people replying to you negatively will hop on Twitter/Instagram/Whatsapp/Gmail/whatever and continue handing their info over to super-centralized social media. I have friends IRL and most of them use traditional social media, so hell yeah I want to be able to interact with them from my own fediverse instance (where some info at least is private)! It's the best of all worlds, and maybe I can get some of the nerdier ones to join me
"We don't want to grow the fediverse Like This" - that's fine, but why defederate from instances that federate with threads.net (call this second tier/party defederation?)? That's punishing/activism (which is fine, but should the entire fediverse be activist like this? Most people just want to balance chatting with friends against data privacy/FOSS) instead of just having an opinion - if you're not federated with threads, then you won't have threads users interacting with your community
I just don't like there being a cabal of fediverse instances that enact any sort of "purity test." I'm so far from a free speech absolutist, but if I want to federate with lemmygrad and exploding-heads (idk maybe I just get curious someday), what purpose does it serve for lemmy.world or whoever to defederates from me?
P.s. re the kerberos example - it's pretty egregious (look it up), but I would love meta/blusky to expand the activityub protocol, it's missing so much (and the lack of activitypub advancement is another argument against this being another instance of the XMPP embrace extend extinguish)
(I'm interested in expanding my opinion on this stuff, so I welcome constructive comments. I would especially like arguments for and against first tier defederation. Maybe even try to support the EEE argument, but I'll be skeptical on that one)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
Yes, I know.. But there's no need for Meta to extinguish Mastodon if we do it ourselves?
taking a stance is not a bad thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
On the other end, there's also the Executive Monkey aspect.
At some point, fighting every battle has a toll. See the decline in the population's mental health as activism increases.
As an apathetic Gen-X'er, I just acknowledge that I'll never make it so everything is exactly the way I want it to be. Some stuff just sucks. And so do I.
ok, i now really want to tie joseph brady into electric chair and press the lever.
may be, but since consequences of losing the battle are usually bigger than little bit of stress, that is really not a reason to wave the white flag.
and so you are trying to convince others to join you in your apathy. got it.
🤷
This doesn't seem applicable - how is meta being intolerant (or the people federating with meta)? Banning instances because they didn't ban a third party instance isn't following the paradox of tolerance.
Sorry if I'm missing something, are you saying meta should be banned because they have bad moderation, tons of bigots, or something like that?
i am saying they should be banned because their ultimate goal is to Embrace, extend and exterminate and if you are going to tolerate it, you'll lose
That's just arguing that companies shouldn't be allowed on decentralized networks like the internet, which IMO isn't realistic, but that's of course okay if that's your opinion.
Here are my full thoughts if you want to provide counterpoints: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/726305
no, that's not, you should read better
oh wait, you didn't read wrong, you tried to misinterpret what i said on purpose, right?
The Internet itself is federated and a mix of nonprofits, governments, and tons of corporations
Rude
Seethe, cope, etc. lol
You seem to be stretching the definition of the "paradox of tolerance" in new and amazing ways. How exactly does the "paradox of tolerance" relate to defederating from instances that haven't explicitly blocked Threads?
it applies to federation of single units in same way as it applies to single unit. if we decide this is a direction we want to take, then everyone has to think about which side of the imaginary barricade they want to stand on.
This isn't FOSS behavior, this is just liberal virtue signaling behavior. I was hoping this behavior stayed on Mastodon where I purged a lot of it. Was really hoping that plague wouldn't hit Lemmy.
you might like parler more, go check it out...
Wait until you realize that liberal does not mean left wing. Liberalism is a right wing ideology.
edit: to the guy who replied and blocked, complex political ideologies aren't reduced to just a simple 4 way political compass lol. Don't get your political knowledge from r/politicalcompassmemes
wait until you realize (if ever) that liberalism has nothing to do with left/right scale...
you can start here: https://www.politicalcompass.org/
I've had multiple conversations about liberalism and come to realize there's a multitude of definitions none of which make complete sense. A left-wing definition might be "liberal democratic capitalism" like most of Europe is, with neoliberal being a more right-wing version of that like the US. A right-winger might use liberal to mean someone culturally progressive. Sometimes liberal is used to mean someone who wants a smaller government, sometimes it is confused with libertarianism (which was originally left-wing but co-opted by free market capitalists).
I don't think the term "liberal" is useful anymore, it's mostly thrown around towards people you perceive to be the status quo.
not understanding or trying to intentionaly appropriate words (similar mechanism to discussed eee) and change their meaning is indeed a thing, but these are still a facts: